Each year thousands of infants and young children are killed or injured in car crashes. Frequently, this can be prevented by always using infant or toddler car safety seats correctly. Many States have now passed laws requiring the use of car seats that are secured to the vehicle when transporting a child, depending on their weight and age.
Traditionally, child car seats are secured to a vehicle by means of the vehicle's built-in safety belts. Child passenger safety experts have developed several ways to make car safety seat installation safer, including LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children), an attachment system that makes installing a car safety seat easier by eliminating the need to use seat belts to secure the car safety seat. It includes 2 sets of small bars, called anchors, located in the back seat where the cushions meet. Car safety seats that come with LATCH have a set of attachments that fasten to these vehicle anchors. However, unless both your vehicle and the car safety seat have this anchor system, you will still need to use seat belts to secure the car safety seat. Similarly, a tether is a strap that attaches a car safety seat to an anchor located on the rear window ledge, the back of the vehicle seat, or on the floor or ceiling of the vehicle. Tethers give extra protection by keeping the car safety seat and the child's head from moving too far forward in a crash or sudden stop. Tethers should not be confused with LATCH attachments, the tether is a longer strap at the top of the seat and LATCH attachments are located at or near the base of the seat. All new cars, minivans, and light trucks have been required to have tether anchors since September 2000. Most new forward-facing car safety seats and a few rear-facing car safety seats come with tethers.
No matter which method discussed above is used to secure a car seat to the vehicle, it can take ten to fifteen minutes to remove and the same amount of time to re-install the car seat. Further, great care must be given to inspect the installation to ensure the car seat is secured properly. Since children can have “accidents” in the car seat and make a mess while traveling, it becomes a frequent chore to remove the seat to clean it, and then perform the installation and inspection again. Frequent removal and re-installation of a car seat can greatly increase the chance of improper installation of the car seat, defeating its safety purpose.
Car seat covers have been made available to alleviate this messy problem. For example, car seat covers are available from Covered in Love, Inc. (www.coveredinlove.com) that cover infant and toddler seats. However, the toddler covers require the user to remove the car seat from the vehicle, turn the seat over, take the straps that come out of the back and pull them through the slots. Then the user has to slip the cover over the existing padded cover, and finally put straps back through the slots Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 6,926,359 B2 to Runk discloses a child seat cover in the form of a pad with slots through the pad that facilitate removal and reinstallation of the cover. Some of the slots accommodate the seat safety harness and merge with side slots that are held closed by mating separable fastening elements. The side slots extend at least partially along the junction between the backrest portion and the side bolster portions of the pad. A pair of back slots extend from respective strap anchoring locations in the backrest region to respective side slots. A release slot is included at each side of the pad, extending from the respective side slot to the adjacent outer side edge of the cover. The Runk seat cover is over-complicated and can present a real challenge in applying to a car seat quickly.
Furthermore, there is one major drawback to having one single car seat cover only. When the child makes a mess in the seat, he or she would have to sit in the mess for the remainder of the excursion or risk soiling the seat directly if the seat cover is removed. While it is possible to carry a spare seat cover, the prior art covers are unwieldy and oddly shaped, requiring a separate bag or pouch to carry and takes up valuable space in the vehicle until it would be needed.
A solution is therefore desired for a car seat cover that can be easily applied to and removed from a children's car seat. It is also desired that this cover be compact and self-contained, and can serve an auxiliary function when it is not attached to the child seat. The car seat cover, when not in use, can become a small cushion that the child or any adult traveling in the vehicle can use for comfort. This facilitates keeping a spare car seat cover, or multiple covers, in the vehicle. When the occasion arises that a spare cover is needed, the soiled cover can be easily removed without removal of the car seat and the spare cover quickly applied. It is further desired that the soiled cover can be sealed into a waterproof self-contained pouch. The seat cover should be durable enough to be washed and dried in a household washing machine and dryer. The cover should be able to accommodate the different positioning of the shoulder and crotch harnesses, to be usable with children as they become older.